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glas·nost
(gläs n st,
-nôst) n.
- An
official policy of the former Soviet
government emphasizing candor with
regard to discussion of social
problems and shortcomings.
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Letter
From Riyadh
Are we witnessing a Saudi glasnost?
By
Peter Bergen
In
the sprawling desert city where Osama
bin Laden was born almost half a century
ago, last week the Saudis held their
first international counterterrorism
conference. A couple of days after the
conference ended, Riyadh was the first
city to vote in the only nationwide
elections that have been held since the
modern Saudi kingdom was founded three
quarters of a century ago. Neither the
conference nor the election - which was
for only half of the seats on Riyadh's
municipal councils - was anything more
than an incremental step along the road
to an honest self-assessment about how
al Qaeda was incubated within the
kingdom, but both are indicative of a
gradualist Saudi glasnost that may mark
the beginnings of democratization and an
enlarged civil society no longer
amenable to the breeding of terrorists.
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It is
hard to imagine either the terrorism conference or
Riyadh's election taking place except in the
context of the wave of more than 20 terrorist
attacks that swept the kingdom beginning in May
2003 - attacks that targeted Western expatriates,
Saudi security personnel, and oil workers and
killed 129 people. The multiple terrorist strikes
gave those urging some measure of political reform
a powerful argument with which to overcome the
objections of those who wanted to maintain the
House of Saud's monopoly on power. And where
previously Saudi officials such as Prince Nayef,
the powerful minister of the interior, publicly
denied the existence of al Qaeda in the kingdom
and opined that Zionists were responsible for the
9/11 attacks, a different tone has been struck in
the past year as the royal family has come to
realize that al Qaeda poses a substantial threat.
Tackling
Terror
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the first phase of eliminating al Qaeda,
the Saudi strategy has been an aggressive
military and intelligence effort to
capture or kill terrorists such as
Abdalaziz al-Muqrin, the group's local
military commander, who personally
executed American helicopter-maintenance
specialist Paul Johnson last June. Two
days after a video of Johnson's beheading
surfaced on the Internet, security forces
killed al-Muqrin. According to Saudi
officials, over the past two years more
than 90 other militants have been killed
and 800 detained. An important facet of
this counterterrorist effort are
U.S.-supplied drones equipped with
infra-red heat-seeking technology that fly
over sparsely populated areas along the
Yemeni-Saudi border locating remote farms
where members of al Qaeda are holed up.
The
second phase of the counterterror campaign
is a hearts-and-minds operation to
persuade the Saudi public of the evils of
terrorism. Public-service announcements on
Saudi television now routinely show the
gruesome aftermath of terrorist attacks,
while ATM machines print out messages
conveying their harms. More important, a
number of senior Saudi clerics have
released statements condemning the
terrorists. Most prominent among them is
the Grand Mufti, Sheikh Abdulaziz
al-Sheikh, a direct descendant of Muhammad
bin Abdul-Wahhab, the cleric whose
religious and military alliance with the
Saudi family in the 18th century created
the first Saudi kingdom. In a statement
published in al Madinah newspaper,
al-Sheik said, "Attacking a building
and throwing explosives, killing innocent
people, frightening the populace and
undermining the stability of society run
contrary to the teaching of Islam."
Al Sheik also condemned the 9/11 attacks
as "gross crimes and sinful
acts."
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..Saudi
strategy has been
an aggressive military
and intelligence effort to
capture or kill terrorists..
..Public-service
announcements on Saudi
television now routinely
show the gruesome
aftermath of terrorist
attacks..
..there
has been
widespread condemnation
of terrorism amongst
senior clerics in the past
year. In addition, some
2,000 of the Kingdom's
100,000 clerics have lost
their jobs for making
inflammatory statements..
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While
such statements are open to the criticism that
they come from "government sheiks"
toeing the new Saudi line, the fact remains that
there has been widespread condemnation of
terrorism amongst senior clerics in the past year.
In addition, some 2,000 of the Kingdom's 100,000
clerics have lost their jobs for making
inflammatory statements, although, after what one
Saudi official describes as
"retraining," most of those fired
clerics have been reinstated.
The
Saudis are also turning one of al Qaeda's key
weapons, the Internet, against the group. For the
past several years al Qaeda's Saudi arm has
maintained two web-based magazines, Al Battar and
Sawt-al-Jihad, where one can find training tips
about how to clean AK47s and strategic advice
urging attacks on economic targets. Now Saudi
clerics are using the Internet to persuade al
Qaeda sympathizers that they have strayed from the
path of true Islam. Islamic Affairs minister Saleh
al-Sheikh told reporters at the terrorism
conference, "We conducted a dialogue with 800
of them and more than a quarter were
convinced." It is not easy to assess the
validity of such claims, but a similar dialogue
between clerics and al Qaeda sympathizers in
neighboring Yemen has yielded positive results.
 The
terrorism conference opened on February 5th as
delegates from some 50 countries arrived at
Riyadh's King Abdul Aziz conference center, a vast
palace decorated in a tasteful version of the
Louis Farouk style favored by Middle Eastern
potentates. Security was intense with helicopters
buzzing overhead, hundreds of soldiers lining the
approaches to the conference center, and blast
barriers ringing the site. The last thing the
government wanted was an attack in the middle of
the conference that had attracted media
organizations from around the world enticed by an
unusually relaxed visa policy.
Inside
the conference center, under chandeliers the size
of a Manhattan studio apartment, Crown Prince
Abdullah delivered the keynote address, making no
mention of al Qaeda and explaining instead that
Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance and
emphasizing that terrorist groups benefit from
arms-smuggling, drug-trafficking, and
money-laundering. Over the next four days of the
conference those uncontroversial themes were
reiterated constantly - a shrewd way of taking off
the table thorny questions about the causes of
terrorism that would have derailed the conference.
The role of authoritarian governments in the
Middle East or the Arab-Israeli conflict in
spawning terrorist groups was nor discussed, nor
was there discussion of state sponsors of
terrorism such as Syria and Iran, both of which
sent delegations to the conference. (Israel was
not invited.) After his address, the 80-year-old
crown prince, the de facto Saudi ruler, shook the
hand of each of the several hundred people
attending the conference who all then repaired to
a Versailles-sized banqueting hall to tuck into a
sumptuous lunch of Scottish smoked salmon, fresh
lobster, and veal medallions in black-truffle
sauce served by fleets of liveried servants.
 Quite
what the Saudi conference will achieve in the long
term is not easy to say, though the fact that it
happened at all may be achievement enough. Crown
prince Abdullah's key proposal was for the
establishment of an international counterterrorism
center, the mechanics of which were never
described. The head of the U.S. delegation, Homeland
Security advisor Frances Fragos Townsend,
cautioned reporters that "the center would
not end the need for bilateral exchange of
information. Nothing would." The proposal for
an international center may eventually devolve
into something more practicable, such as the
proposal made by Bahrain for a regional
counterterrorism center consisting of countries in
the Gulf, several of which are now facing attacks
by al Qaeda-affiliated groups.
"The
beginning of something"
 It
is also unclear what the long-term implications of
the election in Riyadh will be. Certainly, the
election held on February 10 is a precedent,
albeit a small one, as voters cast their ballots
for only half of the members of their municipal
councils and the government will continue to
appoint the rest. While women were not allowed to
participate in the elections either as voters or
as candidates, the Arab News reported that more
than 5,000 male prisoners were encouraged to cast
their votes, perhaps in an effort to increase the
pool of voters, only 150,00 of whom had registered
out of a possible 600,000 eligible to do so. The
lethargic rate of voter registration may have
reflected skepticism among the public that the
elections would achieve much of anything.
But then
a strange thing happened as election day drew
near; campaign posters started appearing on every
street corner and more than 600 candidates
declared candidacies for the seven open seats on
the Riyadh city council. Retail politics Saudi
style involved candidates' setting up tents that
drew hundreds of men to listen to campaign
speeches and to feast on lavish spreads of lamb
and rice as they warmed themselves by log fires to
ward off the chill of the desert night.
 None
of this comes cheap. Abdulrahman al-Humedhi
estmated he spent $100,000 on his campaign - a lot
of money for a college professor, which he is. Al-Humedhi
said his platform "stresses providing service
for the poor, libraries, and parks." He
admitted it was a "risky investment"
with so many candidates running, but even if he
lost it was worth it, he said. "I'm happy to
get myself exposed."
Badr
Saedan, the 41-year-old scion of a Riyadh
real-estate dynasty, who ran one of the splashiest
campaigns, explained that he was running on a
nuts-and-bolts platform of affordable housing and
a clean environment. Saedan said his Ph.D. in
construction management from Dundee, Scotland,
made him well qualified to deal with some
unglamorous but important issues: "We don't
have enough sewage coverage for the city. We have
a problem with landfills that are not safe because
the city is expanding." Milling around by the
food tables, Faisal al-Rwali, a 40-year-old
financial analyst, said that "tonight I made
up my mind" to vote for Saedan. Al-Rwali
expressed the hope that the municipal election was
"maybe a test from the government to see how
we act, to later give us a parliament."
Mohamed al-Qudhaieen, a heavily bearded professor
of linguistics who was also attending the campaign
rally, said he remained undecided how to vote, but
"it's great for the country. Our hope is
there will be more."
 The
day of the election, most of Riyadh's population
of 4 million went about its business as usual, as
foreigners, women, and males under the age of 21 -
the vast majority of the population - could not
vote. At a polling station set up in the
basketball court of a school in a middle-class
neighborhood, dozens of men in headscarves and
long robes milled about, dealing with the
complexities of a ballot featuring hundreds of
choices. Sitting at one end of the court was
44-year-old Abdullah al-Amari, who was fingering a
set of yellow prayer beads. Al-Amari, who teaches
water-source management, was savoring the moment
after voting: "This is the beginning of
something. My way of thinking, it's
excellent." For those who had not registered
to vote he said they had made, "A big
mistake, they should vote for their children's
future."
On the
northern side of town, an area of opulent marble
houses sheltered by high walls, I found another
polling station, this one used by members of the
royal family. A tall prince regally dressed in a
black robe with gold fringes, Mohamed bin Saud bin
Khalid, told a gaggle of reporters that he voted
for "someone I know well, someone I know is
competent." A French TV crew asked him the
$64 billion dollar question: "Is the future
of the kingdom to be a constitutional
monarchy?" The prince replied, "Let's
wait and see" - which is what the House of
Saud has been doing with some success for decades.
 A
senior Saudi official emphasized why a
wait-and-see policy is prudent: "If there
were general elections tomorrow the Islamists and
tribals would win because they are the most
organized." A similar point was made by
Professor Saleh al-Mani, an urbane political
scientist at King Saud University, "The
elections in Iraq have elected the mullahs."
Unlikely support for a gradualist approach also
came from Soliman Al-But'hi, a landscape designer
who once also worked for the El Haramain charity,
which has been designated by the U.S. Treasury
department as a supporter of terrorism. As a
result, the Saudi government has banned Al-But'hi's
travel out of the kingdom and has frozen his bank
account. As we sat cross-legged on the floor of a
restaurant built around a courtyard designed to
evoke the desert heartland of Arabia, Al-But'hi
asked me, "If the House of Saud leaves what
happens? Without the House of Saud there is
chaos."
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Peter Bergen is a fellow at the New America
Foundation, an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins
University, and a terrorism analyst for CNN.
© 2005 by
National Review Online, www.nationalreview.com.
Reprinted by permission.
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